Abstract
Recent reports of religious “hate crime” against Catholics in Scotland have heightened social anxieties—yet such claims are unconvincing when a broader historical and sociological view is taken. Whilst anti-Catholicism was one key marker of Scottish Protestantism for several centuries after the Reformation, in more modern times it declined rapidly and significantly. Few Scots now have the desire, or the wherewithal, to undertake sectarian discrimination. In this chapter we review the historical decline of anti-Catholicism and examine some of the (now substantial) evidence on religion in the social structure and in social experience. These suggest a Catholic community now firmly in the mainstream of Scottish life—and an anti-Catholicism firmly at the margins.
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Notes
- 1.
Catholic Truth, September 29, 2017; Sunday Times, March 18, 2018; Catholic Herald, March 20, 2018; Scottish Catholic Observer, March 23, 2018.
- 2.
Daily Record, July 8, 2018; see also Catholic Herald, July 9, 2018.
- 3.
The Herald, July 14, 2018. See also BBC News, “Orange Walk banned from passing ‘priest attack’ church,” August 23, 2018.
- 4.
The Times, March 14, 2018.
- 5.
The Scotsman, May 21, 2018.
- 6.
Steve Bruce et al., Sectarianism in Scotland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), 4. See also, in general, T.M. Devine, ed., Scotland’s Shame? Bigotry and Sectarianism in Modern Scotland (Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishers, 2000).
- 7.
Tom Gallagher, Glasgow: The Uneasy Peace (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), 5.
- 8.
T.M. Devine, The Scottish Nation: A Modern History (London: Penguin Press, 2012), 84–102.
- 9.
Graham Walker, “The Protestant Irish in Scotland,” in Irish Immigrants and Scottish Society in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. T.M. Devine (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1991), 44–66. Elaine McFarland, Protestants First: Orangeism in Nineteenth Century Scotland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990).
- 10.
Devine, The Scottish Nation, 498–499.
- 11.
Stewart J. Brown, “‘Outside the Covenant’: The Scottish Presbyterian Churches and Irish Immigrants 1922–1938,” Innes Review 42.1 (1991): 19–45; Michael Rosie, The Sectarian Myth in Scotland (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 100–106.
- 12.
Brown, “Outside the Covenant.”
- 13.
Gallagher, Glasgow, 134–182.
- 14.
T.M. Devine, “The End of Disadvantage? The Descendants of Irish Catholic Immigrants in Modern Scotland since 1945,” New Perspectives on the Irish in Modern Scotland, ed. Martin Mitchell (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2008), 193–194.
- 15.
Devine, “The End of Disadvantage,” 193.
- 16.
Patrick Reilly, “Kicking with the Left Foot: Being Catholic in Scotland,” in Devine, Scotland’s Shame? 31.
- 17.
T.M. Devine, ed., St Mary’s Hamilton: A Social History 1846–1996 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1995), 91–93.
- 18.
Devine, “The End of Disadvantage,” 194.
- 19.
Lindsay Paterson, “The social class of Catholics in Scotland,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 163.2 (2000): 363–379; David McCrone, The New Sociology of Scotland (London: Sage, 2017), 336, 361–363.
- 20.
For full details see “Safeguarded Microdata Files.” Accessed November 26, 2019. https://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/safeguarded-microdata-files.
- 21.
For a lengthier discussion see Michael Rosie, “The Sectarian Iceberg?” Scottish Affairs 24.3 (2015): 328–350.
- 22.
See Paterson, “The social Class of Catholics”; Lindsay Paterson, Catherine Calvin, and Ian Deary, “Education, Employment and School Religious Denomination in Scotland in the 1950s,” Oxford Review of Education 41.1 (2015): 26–46.
- 23.
Rosie, “The Sectarian Iceberg?”
- 24.
Bernard Aspinwall, “Baptisms, Marriages and Lithuanians; or, ‘Ghetto? What Ghetto?’ Some Reflections on Modern Catholic Historical Assumptions,” Innes Review 5.1 (2000): 55–67, 56.
- 25.
See Rachel Ormston et al., “A Subtle but Intractable Problem? Public Attitudes to Sectarianism in 2014,” Scottish Affairs 24.3 (2015): 266–287.
- 26.
“Kirk ‘regret’ over bigotry,” BBC News, May 29, 2002.
- 27.
Michael Rosie served on that Group.
- 28.
Advisory Group On Tackling Sectarianism in Scotland (2013), Independent Advice to Scottish Ministers and Report on Activity, 9 August 2012–15 November 2013, 10.
- 29.
Advisory Group On Tackling Sectarianism in Scotland (2015), Tackling Sectarianism and its Consequences in Scotland: Final Report of the Advisory Group on Tackling Sectarianism in Scotland—April 2015, 8.
- 30.
Scottish Government Justice Analytical Services (2018), Religiously Aggravated Offending in Scotland, 2017–2018 (Scottish Government Publications).
- 31.
Scottish Government (2017), Domestic Abuse Recorded by the Police in Scotland, 2016–2017 (Edinburgh: Official Statistics Publication for Scotland).
Select Reading
Aspinwall, Bernard. “Baptisms, Marriages and Lithuanians; or, ‘Ghetto? What Ghetto?’ Some Reflections on Modern Catholic Historical Assumptions.” Innes Review 51.1 (2000): 55–67.
Brown, Stewart J. “‘Outside the Covenant’: The Scottish Presbyterian Churches and Irish Immigrants 1922–1938.” Innes Review 42.1 (1991): 19–45.
Bruce, Steve, Tony Glendinning, Iain Paterson, and Michael Rosie. Sectarianism in Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004.
Devine, T.M., ed. St Mary’s Hamilton: A Social History 1846–1996. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1995.
Devine, T.M., ed. Scotland’s Shame? Bigotry and Sectarianism in Modern Scotland. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishers, 2000.
Devine, T.M. The Scottish Nation. A Modern History. London: Penguin Books, 2012.
Gallagher, Tom. Glasgow the Uneasy Peace: Religious Tensions in Modern Scotland. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987.
McFarland, Elaine. Protestants First: Orangeism in Nineteenth Century Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991.
Mitchell, Martin J., ed. New Perspectives on the Irish in Scotland. Edinburgh: John Donald, 2008.
Paterson, Lindsay. “The Social Class of Catholics in Scotland.” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 163.2 (2000): 363–379.
Rosie, Michael. The Sectarian Myth in Scotland. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
Rosie, Michael. “The Sectarian Iceberg?” Scottish Affairs 24.3 (2015): 328–350.
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Devine, T.M., Rosie, M. (2020). The Rise and Fall of Anti-Catholicism in Scotland. In: Gheeraert-Graffeuille, C., Vaughan, G. (eds) Anti-Catholicism in Britain and Ireland, 1600–2000. Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700–2000. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42882-2_16
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